The Sports Curmudgeon®

The NFL Free Agency Season has begun and – per usual – the Washington Redskins are out front of everyone in their annual quest to win the Super Bowl in March. They have signed Albert Haynesworth to a seven-year deal worth $100M and they also resigned DeAngelo Hall to a new deal. Unfortunately for Skins’ fans – most of whom see the world through burgundy and gold colored glasses – the actual Super Bowl will not be played until next February. Hey, what could go wrong…?

Let me be clear; Albert Haynesworth is an outstanding defensive tackle; his physical skills cannot be in question. Having said that, Albert Haynesworth has played a full 16-game schedule exactly one time in his seven-year NFL career. In the past, he has had temper issues such as the time he stomped a Cowboys’ offensive lineman in the head. He also had a reputation for uninspired play every once in a while - - until last year which was his “contract year”. The last time the Redskins went out and got themselves the defensive player of the year as a DT, it was Dana Stubblefield. Stubby had good years in SF; his tenure with the Redskins with “fat-wallet syndrome” was less than mediocre. What could go wrong…?

DeAngelo Hall got $55M for six years. Just a year ago, he got $70M for seven years from the Raiders who cut him after 8 games last year to avoid paying him the next installment of his guaranteed roster bonuses. In Atlanta before Oakland, Hall earned the nickname “MeAngelo”. What could go wrong…?

Since I’m on the NFL this morning, let me comment on some other things that have been piling up on my clipboard. To call what the Dallas Cowboys have been going through in the last eight weeks a soap opera would be understatement. The owner/GM/shadow coach has put a gag on his entire coaching staff; only Jerry Jones can speak to the press on “matters/football”. That is the only way, Jones says, for the press to talk to someone who has the “whole picture”. In the past, I have said that the “M” in Daniel M. Snyder should stand for “Megalomania”. I have never seen Jerry Jones’ name with a middle initial so I assume he has none, but given the events of the past month or so, he and Danny Boy might agree to share that “M”.

Let me try to put a perspective on Jerry Jones’ assumption that he is the only one in the Cowboys’ organization who can do things right – from building a new stadium to marketing the team to being the GM to handling the “cap issues” to… Enrico Caruso was a hell of a singer; he was not the guy who worked the sound equipment to make his recordings. “Sully” is obviously an accomplished pilot for commercial jetliners; he is not the guy who wrote the programs for computer-aided design that develop new planes for Boeing. I am sure you see where I am going with this; I am not certain that Jerry Jones would be able to relate it to the Cowboys.

The Cowboys are a mess. Tony Romo is a good QB; but in pressure games – like ones played in December or January – he morphs into Tony No-Mo; the team will play “No-Mo games”. Terrell Owens had a mini-version of a hissy fit last year when stories leaked that he thought that Romo and his road-roomie, Jason Witten, were freezing him out of getting the ball during games.

Memo to Cowboys: T.O. had “issues” with the QB in San Francisco, Jeff Garcia, and with the QB in Philly, Donovan McNabb. Do you see a pattern here? The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior…

Roy Williams, the wide receiver, cost the Cowboys four draft picks and a contract extension at mid-season; Williams caught a total of 36 passes for 430 yards for the entire season. Don’t even mention PacMan Jones who is cut from the team at the moment but who has said he thinks he will get another shot with the Cowboys. In addition, Roy Williams, the safety, is paid as if he were on a par with Ed Reed and Brian Dawkins and Troy Polamalu when he is really at the level of “average NFL safety”. Tank Johnson was another miscreant signed by the Cowboys to “make a difference”. Johnson does not have enough ability to carry the label “waste of talent”; he is large enough though to qualify as a “waste of space”.

In summary, the Cowboys have found a way to get contractual deals done to the satisfaction of this menagerie, but they could not find a way to reach a contractual agreement with Dan Reeves – who has deep Cowboy roots and has shown that he actually does know something about NFL football. As I said, if you took all the writers and creative consultants for As The World Turns and forced them to stay awake for 96 consecutive hours feeding them hallucinogenic mushroom omelets for the whole time, I’m not sure they could come up with something more outrageous than the Dallas Cowboys.

Here is Greg Cote of the Miami Herald on just one small aspect of the Cowboys soap opera:

“Terrell Owens will be starring in a new TV series on VH1. Because it is billed as a ‘reality show,’ I assume that means T.O. will be playing an insufferable, egotistical bore in steep career decline.”

The Minnesota Vikings won the NFC North last year; please do not forget that. Since the end of their playoff “run”, they have been evaluating their QB situation. The good news is that they recognize it for what it was, i.e. pathetic. Now, the Vikes have concluded that the resolution of that situation is to trade a 4th round pick to the Texans for Sage Rosenfels and then to give Rosenfels a two-year contract extension for $9M. I have not liked Tarvaris Jackson since the first time I saw him; he is better now than then but is still significantly sub-par. Gus Frerotte has been a journeyman for his whole career and will not climb above that level in the future. However, if Sage Rosenfels is “the answer”, that tells you just how marginal the coaches graded out those two incumbent QBs. The rest of the NFC North needs to realize that they lost the division last year to a team whose quarterbacking was somewhere north of “miserable” and somewhere south of “tolerable”.

Can someone explain to me why the Arizona Cardinals fired defensive coordinator Clancy Pendergast? Didn’t the Cards’ defense play a significant role in their playoff run to the Super Bowl? A new form of the “blame-game” has broken out with regard to the NFL. If a unit on a team is under-performing or just plain stinking, then the fault must lie with the coordinator for that unit. Of course, that is a possibility. More likely, however, is that the players on the field are under-performing or just plain stinking. Despite what the talking heads say, football is much more about execution on the field than it is about “schemes”.

Earlier this week the Tampa Bay Bucs cut Derrick Brooks, Warrick Dunn, Joey Galloway, Ike Hilliard and Cato June on the same day. Father Time catches up with everyone. That “cut list” would have been unthinkable five years ago.

Finally, let me allow Scott Ostler of the SF Chronicle to summarize very compactly one other NFL personnel situation:

“Here’s Marshawn Lynch’s cruising checklist: No license plates? Check. Heavily tinted windows? Check. Four reefers and lighter? Check. Loaded 9 mm pistol? Check. No gun registration? Check. Recent guilty plea in incident where you struck a pedestrian and drove away? Check. Fellas, let’s roll! Lynch makes Michael Phelps look like Stephen Hawking.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

Comments(4)

Three friends of mine – I actually do have friends – have a multi-game plan to see the Washington Wizards and they have really good seats on one of the club levels. Yesterday afternoon, the wife of one of these guys had to go to the emergency room so there was no way he was going to last night’s Wizards/Sixers game. [She was passing a kidney stone; I know what that is like; I also know that she is going to be fine in a couple of days. That’s the good news.] So, I had the opportunity to go to the game with the other two gentlemen.

For several years, I have sworn off regular-season NBA basketball but the chance to check out these sweet seats with two old friends was sufficiently enticing to get me to the Verizon Center. The seats were great; other than sitting at the scorer’s table, they were as good as any in the house. The camaraderie was great – particularly after we got the e-mail from the missing ticket-holder about the diagnosis for his wife. At the same time, the game was awful and reinforced why regular season NBA games need to remain on my “shunned” list.

The Wizards are a dreadful team and the Sixers are a “break-even team”. Last night’s game was tedious at best; it was played just fast enough to generate mistakes and bad shots for both sides but not nearly fast enough to be exciting and effective basketball. It was a “one-possession game” for much of the first half and the margin was three points at the half; nevertheless the crowd was about a step-and-a-half above comatose and the players were about two steps above somnambulation. Someone must have buzzed an alarm clock in the Sixers’ locker room at halftime because they came out for the second half with a spurt of energy and attention, took a double-digit lead quickly and then both teams settled back onto a lethargic glide-path for the rest of the game.

The crowd yelled louder for the “dot-race feature” on the scoreboard than for all but about two plays in the entire game. Even the exhortations to “make some noise” produced nothing that approached the decibel level of the pumped in noise from the house DJ. Even the Wizards’ “cheerleaders” could not create sustained enthusiasm; and let me be clear about this, the thing that was missing from some of their cheers was a pole for each of them to use as a prop.

I started by saying these were great seats; the walk-up price is in the low triple digits. Other prices in the Verizon Center are anything but “family-friendly” in these economic times. A hot dog and a beer will run you 12 bucks; a bag of peanuts and a large soda will take $8.50 out of your exchequer. If you are there with your kids, do not take them anywhere near the souvenir stands without already having a line of credit established somewhere. All this for dull basketball and a mid-week game that had all the impact of pocket lint…

My friends say they will cut back their plan next season due to economic concerns. At the moment, they think they will get cheaper seats and fewer games. The Wizards are in the midst of a horrid exacta; the economy is down and the team stinks. Maybe next year those “cheerleaders” will actually have poles out there on the court with them as props? The Wizards will have to do something to get folks in the arena…

Speaking of the NBA, the Knicks and Stephon Marbury have parted. Whoever presided over the final negotiations that engendered that separation should qualify immediately for an exorcist’s license. With Marbury gone, the Knicks’ franchise can be said to be in remission; if the Celtics sign him – as is widely rumored – someone needs to schedule that franchise for chemotherapy.

Charles Barkley will spend about a week in jail as a result of his DUI arrest and subsequent happenings. DUI is a serious thing because the person doing it puts other innocent folks in danger while he/she is behind the wheel in that condition. I fear that Sir Charles is in danger of recidivism here - - not because he is a bad person. This is a man who will confront multiple demons simultaneously more than once in a while. You have seen Charles Barkley play golf and you have seen that swing of his - - the one that is not nearly as smooth as one you can find for a claymation figure. So, after a round of golf with that swing where his total score for the round nudges closer to 200 than it is to 100, he goes into the clubhouse bar and orders - - an iced tea? I don’t think so. Then comes the trip back home…

Memo to Sir Charles: Be strong. Stay well.

I mentioned above the Wizards’ potential problems next year because of the economy. It seems as if the NY Yankees are feeling some of the heat right now. The Yankees are running ads in NY papers touting the availability of seats “between first and third base” at $325 a seat. I do not think this is a form of “charity” by the Yankees paying for repeated large ads in local newspapers because the team realizes that the papers are in financial trouble. This can only mean the seats are not sold yet - - and the Yankees are already playing Spring Training games. I mentioned this to my friends last night and one of them – a Yankee-hater forever – said that he hoped there were loads of empty seats for opening day at the new stadium and that those empty seats showed up all over the TV camera shots for the whole game.

That is simply not going to happen. The Yankees will not have hundreds of empty seats between first and third base for the cameras to focus on – and for ESPN to comment on – for opening day at the new stadium. If the team has to go around to homeless shelters all over the five boroughs of the city and dress up the residents there in acceptable clothing, there will be fannies in those seats.

Tipping his hat to the creativity of minor league baseball to come up with clever promotional events, Brad Rock of the Deseret Morning News had this suggestion:

“How about honoring victims of Dick Vitale’s audio assaults?

“Bring foam ear plugs and call it “ReVITALE-izing Your Hearing Night.”

Finally, here is an item from Dwight Perry in the Seattle Times that probably slipped below your radar - - and for which he should be ashamed:

“And in baseball transactions, the White Sox have re-signed stadium organist Nancy Faust to a two-year deal, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

“The Marlins’ offer was also tempting, insiders say, but she didn’t like the Florida keys.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

Comments(0)

By now, you must have seen the replay of the “Jim Calhoun news conference/confrontation” at least a dozen times. Many have said that the question posed to him was inappropriate because of the time and place where it was asked; many have said that Calhoun was far too thin-skinned and over-reacted to the questioning. Whatever…

Jim Calhoun asserted that the UConn basketball program turned over $12M to the University of Connecticut annually. That figure made me sit up, take notice, and focus on a different angle with regard to the confrontation.

Coach Calhoun did not say if the $12M was a net profit from the basketball program or if it was the gross revenue from which expenses had to be subtracted. That is not very important to me because there is no way that the UConn basketball program costs $12M a year to operate. If that $12M figure is even close to correct, then UConn basketball is a “profit center” and a “money-maker” for the university - - and by extension for the State of Connecticut.

The “gotcha-reporter” who asked the question thought Calhoun was making too much money annually but if I were a taxpayer in Connecticut - - and I have never been one - - I would be very pleased to know that he is making money for a State-run enterprise. Clearly, the vast majority of the State expenditures go to activities that do not return an excess of money to the State; they run in the red. So, even if the UConn program only earns a net income of $1 for a year, that’s a whole lot better than running at a loss in these problematic economic times.

The reporter seemed to think that there was something improper about Jim Calhoun making more money than the Governor of the State of Connecticut. In some broad philosophical sense, he is probably correct. [For the record, Calhoun also makes more money than the President of the United States.] Nevertheless, I think it would be a serious mistake for the Connecticut Legislature to introduce a bill to raise the Governor’s salary to a level where it exceeds Jim Calhoun’s. Remember, Calhoun runs his program in the black. Would that the Governor of Connecticut – and the governors of the other forty-nine states – had the ability to do the same.

Since I was on the topic of Jim Calhoun, let me make a couple of observations about two college basketball games I caught over last weekend. I saw about half of the Providence/Notre Dame and watched Notre Dame win the game 103-84. At one point, there was a screen graphic indicating that Providence had yielded 90+ points in seven of its last eleven games. Looking at the Providence record for the year, they are 16-11 at this point but 6 of their wins have come over cupcake opponents such as Brown, Dartmouth, Maine, Sacred Heart, Jackson State and Bryant University. Maybe if they played some defense, they would be better than a .500 club against live competition?

Butler beat Davidson at Davidson over the weekend and that was the eleventh win for Butler on the road this year. Very impressive… Last year, Davidson made a great run in the tournament to the Elite Eight but this year the team has faltered every time it took on one of the “big boys”. Davidson has lost to Oklahoma, Purdue, Duke and Butler. Their two wins outside of the Southern Conference and a similar level of opponents have come against NC State and West Virginia. Stephen Curry is still an exciting player to watch, but I think that teams are no longer surprised by Davidson and by Curry as a player and that explains why the good teams seem not to have fallen victim to last year’s “giant-killer”.

Do you realize that if the NBA playoffs started with the teams standing as they did going into last night’s games, there would be three teams in the Eastern Conference playoffs with records at or below .500? Making those putative playoffs would be Detroit (27-27), Philly (27-28) and Milwaukee (28-31). Meanwhile, in the Western Conference the Phoenix Suns would be out of the playoffs at the moment with a record of 31-24.

David Lee is a power forward for the NY Knicks and he is having a highly successful season this year that many people have not heard much about. I know it is hard to believe that Lee is under-appreciated and under-publicized playing in NYC, but that is the case. Consider that he is averaging 16.6 points per game, 11.9 rebounds per game and 2.1 assists per game in about 36 minutes per game. That is more than a solid performance from a guy who is never mentioned when the discussion turns to naming highly valuable players in the NBA for the 2008-09 season.

According to a website that tracks NBA salaries, David Lee will earn $1.79M this year; only one player on the Knicks’ roster makes less than Lee does; Wilson Chandler – whom I could not distinguish from Woodrow Wilson or the mayor of Chandler, Arizona – will make only $1.17M this year. Meanwhile, the Knicks are on track to pay Stephon Marbury $20.8M this year to stay away from the team. On that basis alone, David Lee may be the biggest bargain in the NBA for the year.

Tell the truth, did you immediately remember that Wilson Chandler played college basketball at DePaul? I did not…

Sometimes it is important to put things into historical perspective and sometimes the historical perspective can be painful for sports fans. Chicago Cubs fans might not like to focus on this picture:

1. The last time the Cubs won the World Series was in the Fall of 1908.

2. The Cubs now hold Spring Training in Arizona.

3. Arizona did not become a state until Valentine’s Day in 1912.

Connect those dots to understand how long it has been since the Cubbies were champions…

Finally, here is a comment from Scott Ostler of the SF Chronicle regarding the Oakland Raiders’ recently concluded interview processes in search of a new head coach:

“The Raiders like to point out that not everyone who comes in for an interview with Al Davis is a head-coach candidate. What these Raider people need to realize is that after Lane Kiffin, most of us assume that anyone who sets foot inside the Raiders’ compound and isn’t carrying a broom is a candidate for head coach.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

Comments(3)

Danny Almonte can step aside. He is no longer the biggest con artist in terms of lying about his age in baseball. All he – and the folks around him – did was to pull the wool over the eyes of some Little League volunteers who let a 14-year-old compete against and dominate 12-year-olds. [Aside: The fact that Danny had to shave four times a week should have been a sign to those Little League “administrators”; but what the hey…] Now we have to add the name of Carlos Alvarez to our lexicon of sports prevaricators. Alvarez is a 23-year-old minor league prospect of the Washington Nats. The problem is that they signed him a few years ago under the name of Esmailyn Gonzalez and they thought – up until about a week ago – that he was only 20 years old.

Supposedly, they scouted this kid in the Dominican Republic for a couple of years and “waited until he was 16” to sign him to comply with MLB rules. By the way, that also means that MLB officials in addition to Washington Nationals’ folks were conned by this action.

This is not the result of a typographical error on a birth certificate; this is a full change of identity. Moreover, to make matters worse, the FBI is looking into the matter because there are allegations that not all of the money spent by the Nats to sign Alvarez/Gonzalez went to him. Some may have been skimmed; the FBI has interviewed the Nats’ GM; the director of the Nats’ baseball academy in the Dominican Republic has taken a leave of absence so as not to be a “distraction” to the team in spring training.

It has been difficult for me to understand how a group of people who are nominally “baseball people” could have assembled a team as miserable as the one that played as the Washington “Gnats” in 2008. However, if they got themselves into this kind of a mess over a prospect and paid out $1.4M to sign him without realizing that some skimming might be going on, things are becoming clearer…

Sticking with baseball, there are some folks who are taking potshots in the direction of Ichiro Suzuki. The Mariners had a truly awful season last year and some are now complaining that Ichiro is not a leader in the clubhouse, that he is a loner and that he is a selfish player who does not bunt or steal enough bases. Mariners’ alum JJ Putz was one of the folks who made these kinds of remarks without naming Ichiro specifically.

If anyone in the Mariners’ front office is hearing about this and giving it serious thought, let me say that there is no team in MLB for whom Ichiro Suzuki does not start. No team has three outfielders who are better than he is; most do not have one outfielder who is better than he is. He has had more than 200 hits for the last eight seasons; he has an MLB batting average of .331; he is an outstanding defensive outfielder. If the Mariners even think of trading Ichiro, the number of teams who should inquire about the price for him should be 29.

The LA Galaxy and MLS are in the midst of a small tug-of-war with David Beckham and the Italian team to whom they loaned Beckham. Stunningly, Beckham wants to stay in Italy and play with a more talented crew of teammates. Frankly, I think MLS will be better off with Beckham playing somewhere else but that is a matter for MLS and its lawyers to resolve. What I find interesting is the change of perspective that David Beckham has come to between the heady days of his signing with the LA Galaxy and the present. Consider:

[Then] “It’s also about being an ambassador for the game here and, hopefully, it is going to encourage other players to come to the States and be part of this because soccer in America can become much bigger.

“That’s why I’m here. I want to be part of the growth of the game in the States.”

[Now] “To be honest, the Americans are trying to improve the level of the game and its reputation. The American game is very young. I think it needs another 10 years to reach an important level.”

Interestingly, when some of us pointed out that the ”American game” was not nearly ready for an infusion of world-class talent – stipulating that Beckham used to be world-class talent – the soccer acolytes in America screamed that we didn’t know what we were talking about. Now, I guess Beckham doesn’t either…

As usual, Scott Ostler puts this entire matter into perspective in two simple sentences in the SF Chronicle:

“That’s a heartbreaker, the news about David Beckham coming back to the United States. But it’s great for American soccer, and for all the fans of whatever American team Beckham played for when he wasn’t injured.”

As the economy continues to weaken and the effects on sports is beginning to become clear to most anyone looking at the subject objectively, here are a few things that might work out for the best in terms of sports fans:

1. Maybe MLB teams will find a way to remain solvent without charging $7.00 for a beer.

2. Maybe NFL teams will find out that season ticket buyers really hate to have to pay full regular season ticket prices for those two exhibition games they are forced to buy.

3. Maybe NBA teams will be a lot more cautious about offering a “max contract” to players who only put out “max effort” when it is their “walk year”.

Here is a way for fans to benefit in these times of downturn. Go see a minor league baseball game this summer. You will enjoy yourself. Then next fall, find the college near you that plays Division 1-AA or Division II football and go take in a game on a sunny autumn afternoon. You will enjoy yourself. Next winter, do the same thing with that same school’s basketball program. If pro sports owners see their attendance decline while more reasonably priced alternatives show attendance increases, that could engender some “price adjustments” in the future for sports fans. Think about it.

The Indy Racing League is making adjustments due to the economy. There will be two fewer days of practice for the Indy 500 this year. I do not know if I will be able to make it through the month of May with that burden…

Finally, since I quoted Scott Ostler of the SF Chronicle above, let me close with another of his observations, which raises a series of questions that no one seems to be chasing down:

“Donald Fehr says the players’ union didn’t have time to destroy the records and tests from that “anonymous” ‘03 survey testing, the secret data that is now leaking all over baseball. The test results were finalized Nov. 13. On Nov. 19 the subpoena news came down, legally blocking destruction of the evidence. The union had at least six days to destroy the smoking guns, six days to crank up a paper-shredder. God created the world in six days. And no, I don’t think He was on steroids.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

Comments(4)

Cue Gene Autry:

I’m back in the saddle again…

Today’s commentary will deal with events that have gone down while I have been away. I am sure that I have missed some of the inanities of the sports world in the past two weeks, but the stuff here refuses to be ignored.

Regarding all of the hand wringing and moralizing about Alex Rodriguez and his changing story about his steroid usage, the commentaries that I find most annoying are the ones that talk about A-Rod’s “credibility” with regard to these stories and the ones that boldly assert that he is not yet telling the whole truth here. Ho- hum!

Alex Rodriguez has – by his admission – been involved with steroids for about eight years now. He has not been on them continuously by his account but it has been eight years. For all of that time, he has denied any such usage.

Translation: He has lied about that for eight years.

Now with a failed test confronting him, he has decided to “tell the truth”; absent the revelation of that failed test, he would still be asserting that he never took steroids.

Translation: He would still be lying.

A big part of the problem is that he “told the truth” by reading it from a piece of paper and evading just about all the follow-up questions. Therefore, I wish everyone would cease and desist from any philosophical peregrination with regard to his truth-telling now. He has been lying about this for eight years; he would still be lying about it now if he could; he is saying the minimum that he thinks he can get away with about the subject now that he cannot deny it. More importantly, he will continue to do so - - unless he is under oath sometime in the future in which case he may possibly opt not to follow in the footsteps of folks like Marion Jones, Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds and Miguel Tejada. End of message with regard to veracity in this matter…

One aspect of this story is yet to be told – having nothing to do with A-Rod. How did Selena Roberts come into possession of the data regarding his failed test for steroids? If – I said IF – these came from documents that a court had put under seal at some time, then there could well be an investigation as to the source of that leak. In that case, we might see Selena Roberts subpoenaed to reveal that source. If that were to happen, let me say now that I would have zero sympathy for Roberts should she refuse to testify fully. If that is the way she got the documents, the person who gave them to her committed a criminal act and she aided and abetted that criminal act. That would not be a “freedom of the press” issue; that would be a “protecting a criminal” issue. Remember, this comment is based on a supposition not yet proven to be the case. Stay tuned…

I did not find the antecedent comments that must have provoked this comment from Larry Bowa regarding former Dodger pitcher Brad Penny, but the following is vintage Larry Bowa:

“Is this the same [Brad] Penny that never went to meetings, that came late, left early, was never in shape, always had an excuse when things didn’t go right, didn’t help the young kids at all?”

I do not recall the name of the player, but when Bowa managed the Phillies, he and one of the guys on the bench clearly did not get along. After the season, the player ripped Bowa up and down. Bowa said in response that he would be happy to talk to any manager or GM on any team in baseball to tell them all about this player such that the player would never be in the major leagues ever again. Whatever happened to the adage?

What happens in the clubhouse stays in the clubhouse.

Darryl Strawberry has written a “tell-all book”. I hope someone has notified the Nobel Committee. In addition, Mike Tyson claims that he too is in the process of writing a “tell-all book”. Let me be clear about this; I shall not be providing any reviews or summaries of these literary oeuvres in this space. If you find the private lives/escapades of either of these gentlemen even marginally interesting, you will have to read these books for yourselves.

ESPN did not renew Emmitt Smith’s contract. Praise be to the Lord for that. I guess that ESPN now stands for:

Emmitt Smith Pontificates Nevermore.

Elgin Baylor is suing the Clippers – and owner Donald Sterling – claiming that he was a victim of discrimination, that he was fired because of his age and his race and that during his tenure with the Clippers he was grossly underpaid as the GM when compared to other NBA executives. A few points here:

1. Elgin Baylor was GM of the Clippers for 22 years.

2. In that tenure, the Clippers won the NBA championship zero times and made the playoffs a total of three times.

3. Whether or not he was hamstrung by the actions of the owner, that record does not justify him holding onto his job for 22 years.

4. If he knew for 22 years that he was “grossly underpaid”, why didn’t he demand a raise? Might it have been those long periods of time when the Clippers where bottom-feeders in the NBA with the teams he assembled?

The WTA had a tournament scheduled in the United Arab Emirates. Officials there would not allow one of the players into the country because she is an Israeli. The WTA played the tour anyway. That is an absolute abomination; the WTA should be shunned for that.

Moreover, the players on that tour who participated in that tournament have now forfeited any and all claims they may ever have regarding how they might be discriminated against. If a player played under those conditions, she participated in that crass discriminatory act. The WTA and the players who participated in that event are loathsome.

The Atlanta Falcons say they would be willing to trade the rights to Michael Vick to another NFL team. I should say they would… I would also suspect that the phone has not been ringing off the hook in Falcons Headquarters. I have not had time to go back and review all of the events in last year’s “Michael Vick Saga”, so from memory let me hit a few of the high points:

He may be released from prison in June 09 - - assuming that no added criminal behaviors are uncovered and added to his cafeteria tray before then.

He will be a PR disaster wherever he goes to play.

He is still suspended by the NFL and has to be reinstated by the same Commissioner to whom he lied about his involvement in dogfighting while the investigation was ongoing.

He will be subject to the NFL substance abuse policy.

He was involved in a gambling enterprise in addition to a dogfighting enterprise.

He has not played football for 2 years.

He still has a lot of time left on the 10-year contract that he signed about five years ago and that contract was worth something north of $125M. Assuming that lots of that money was in the form of an upfront bonus, let me guess that $50M is left to go on the contract over the next five or six years.

Forget any other “issues” here. The chances are that Michael Vick will not be able to play for an NFL team in 2009 and the best one might hope for would be to have him for the 2010 season - - assuming that he is a model citizen during the intervening year. So, what might another team be willing to offer for his services now in February 2008? A box of practice kicking tees?

Finally, here are two observations from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald that are definitely on point:

“The NFL combine begins Wednesday. Somebody told me it involved college players working out for pro teams. I had assumed it involved college players harvesting grain on large farm equipment.”

“Recently retired Brett Favre has waffled on intentions to tentatively cancel a news conference to announce plans to possibly change his mind.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

Comments(9)

I shall be off the air for about two weeks. It has been a cold winter here in the DC suburbs and my long-suffering wife and I have decided that migratory birds have gotten it right. We need to go where it is warm.

We leave for Guatemala tomorrow. We’ll be back on the 19th. By the time I get things back together and catch up with doings in the sports world, I’ll probably have something posted on Monday 23 February.

Check back then…

Comments(3)

I have a bunch of things I want to clear from my clipboard today; and to start things off, I want you to put yourself in the role of a baseball arbitrator. A player and a team have not agreed on a contract and you have two salary numbers in front of you. According to the rules set down by the Collective Bargaining Agreement, you must pick one of them; you cannot “split the difference”.

The player in question is a starting pitcher. Last season, his record was 1-5 with an ERA of 5.83 in 12 starts. His season was cut short by a visit to the disabled list, which saw him have “minor” elbow surgery to remove some bone spurs and calcium deposits. He is ready to report to spring training.

The team has offered him a 24% raise over last year. The player seeks a 93% raise over last year. You are the arbitrator … what sayeth you?

Reality is that the pitcher in question is Shawn Hill of the Washington Nationals and he got his 93% raise. If he has a great spring training, he might be the #4 starter for the Nats; more than likely, he will fight for the #5 starting slot; whatever he does for the Nats this year, he will do it while pulling down $775K.

Speaking of pitching “uncertainty”, the Milwaukee Brewers made the NL playoffs last year with CC Sabathia and Ben Sheets in the starting rotation – at least most of the time when Sheets was healthy. Both are gone in the off-season and I read somewhere that the Brewers’ GM has been told by the owner that the team is pretty much at the budget mark for this year. I went to the Brewers roster to see what their rotation looked like without Sheets and Sabathia. In alphabetical order, here are six starters for their rotation:

Dave Bush
Yovani Gallardo
Seth McClung
Manny Parra
Jeff Suppan
Carlos Villanueva

If the Brewers are going to make it to the playoffs again this year, they are going to need some major improvement from at least two of these guys…

Meanwhile, the Blue Jays signed a Japanese pitcher to a minor league contract. Unless this guy is a conduit for some of his teammates also to sign with the Blue Jays, I do not understand why it is worth the time and effort to sign Ken Takahashi at all. Two weeks after the season starts, Takahashi will be 40 years old. He has been a pitcher for the Hiroshima Carp for 14 seasons; and in that time, he has a record of 66-87 with a career ERA of 4.23. I guess the Blue Jays really thought the needed a wily old lefthander but they found out that Warren Spahn is still dead. Ergo…

As the days go by, many writers/commentators keep returning to the idea that the SF Giants and Manny Ramirez might make a deal. Now, from the standpoint of taking a huge piece of the LA Dodgers’ offense away from the Dodgers by signing Ramirez, this concept makes sense for the Giants. However, from lots of other perspectives, it makes no sense.

The Giants’ lineup is a weak one. If you put Manny Ramirez in the middle of it, he might not see a ball intentionally thrown in the strike zone until Flag Day. Remember the kind of pitches that Barry Bonds got in his final seasons in SF and there were better hitters in the lineup near him than the Giants can put in the lineup now. There is a likelihood that kind of situation would frustrate Ramirez and the memory of how a frustrated Manny Ramirez behaves with his teammates (Kevin Youkilis) and team staff members (Red Sox traveling secretary) should be front and center in the minds of the Giants’ officials. Oh, and if Manny decides he really wants to be traded to get away from that kind of situation, they can review how he behaves to assure that a trade will have to happen.

I have to say a few things about the Sports Illustrated story saying that Alex Rodriguez failed a drug test in 2003 – those screening tests that were supposed to be anonymous because all they were to do was to ascertain if expanded testing was necessary.

1. All the “A-Fraud” and “A-Roid” and “A-testoste-Rod” jokes that need to be made have been made.

2. MLB says it cannot comment because the results of these test were supposed to remain private.

3. The MLBPA refused to comment on the matter other than to say that the sanctity of the privacy of these tests is paramount.

4. Alex Rodriguez and Scott Boras said to go talk to the union.

5. If – I said IF – MLB and the MLBPA have any real concerns with cleaning up the game then they have to stop this legalspeak/bull [rhymes with spit].

6. Does the allegation that MLBPA deputy Gene Orza was tipping off players as to when their random test was due to happen bother you at least as much as the prospect that yet another star player may have used steroids? It does me.

7. Can we now recognize the Mitchell Report for what it was? It was a shallow, incomplete investigative report and investigative process that had lots of self-serving verbiage in it. Then again, a former wrote US Senator it so why should we be surprised about that?

Greg Cote is ready for baseball to begin. Here is a recent comment in the Miami Herald:

“The Marlins are set to open spring training next week, and the artist renderings of the team’s new stadium are out. I can attest to the accuracy of the drawings, because in them all of the seats are empty.”

Some folks are now expressing shock at the draconian 3-month suspension of Michael Phelps by the Lords of Swimming. Excuse me, will any of those hand-wringers please give me the list of the major swimming events that Phelps will be denied participation in between now and Mothers’ Day? Is there some kind of “shadow-Olympic competition” scheduled that I have not heard anything about? If not, then this punishment is as meaningful as sending a kid to his room for a timeout where he can spend the time with his Xbox.

Finally, here is an item from Dwight Perry in the Seattle Times:

“Starting forward Dominique “Niki” McCoy has been suspended from the Bowling Green women’s basketball team, the Toledo Blade reported, after she was charged with:

• DUI (police say she blew a 0.178),
• driving with a suspended license,
• failure to use turn signals, and
• open liquor container in her car.

“School publicists say it’s her first quadruple-trouble.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

Comments(0)

In a recent column, Jerry Greene of the Orlando Sentinel reported on a poll done by ESPN Magazine on the sports that fans thought were fixed. Here is what he reported:

1. Pro ‘rassling 75% thought it was fixed
2. Boxing 48%
3. NBA 38%
4. Horseracing 26%
5. Football 14%
6. NCAA BB 11%

Clearly, any poll that involves fan voting is unscientific but let us allow for a moment that these results actually reflect a reasonable representation of the populace. In that case, I might be tempted to conclude that the populace has a large number of folks who really need to reconnect with reality. For example:

1. Are you comfortable living in a place where 25% of the people around you think that pro ‘rassling is real? Next time you are driving on an Interstate at 65 mph in heavy traffic, consider that one in four of the drivers around you has a judgment level such that he thinks that Wrestlemania is for real. With that acuity of perception, do you want him changing lanes on you?

2. I said 10 - 15 years ago that boxing was morphing into pro ‘rassling. The occasion of that comment was when some goof flew himself on a glider into the ring ropes during a championship fight. Today, the pre-fight hype and the “strange decisions” in boxing look like the WWE more than they look like real sports.

3. To the 74% of those folks out there who do not think some of the events in horseracing are fixed, let me break this news to you. There is no Tooth Fairy; she was jailed when she was caught in the midst of an interspecies ménage a trois with the Easter Bunny and Chewbacca.

4. College basketball has had “fixing scandals” and “point-shaving scandals” proven in courts of law in the US dating back to the 1940s. Somehow, 89% of the folks think that is not happening any more. What made it stop?

5. Where is tennis on this list? The folks who run tennis think one of their ranked players has tanked matches. Isn’t tanking equivalent to fixing?

6. Is the absence of NHL and/or MLS from this list evidence of the purity of those games - - or is it that no one would care enough to fix them? You make the call.

Earlier this week I noted that 3 Feb is known as “The Day The Music Died”. Today, 6 Feb, marks the birthdays of Fabian Forte, Bob Marley and Axl Rose. I think it is fair to say that today, 6 Feb, cannot be considered the day music was reincarnated.

Sometime next week, the Sacramento Kings are going to retire the number of Vlade Divac. In five seasons with the Kings, Divac averaged 12 points a game and led the team to precisely zero championships. For this, they retire a jersey? By this standard, the Detroit Pistons will retire the number of Antonio McDyess one day; his contributions to the Pistons have been a bit better than Divac’s contributions to the Kings were. Does this make sense to you?

Manny Ramirez – via Scott Boras – turned down a Dodgers contract offer of $25M for one year. Never fear; as Scott Boras has stated all along, there is indeed another team bidding for Manny’s services. The Worcester Tornadoes play in the Can-Am League and they have offered Manny a two-year contract to play for them for a total of $24K. The Can-Am League plays a “short-season” so this works out to about $3K a month or a hundred dollars a day. If you look at the offer, it makes some sense:

Manny likes to take time off. In this league, the season is so short that he will get plenty of time off.

Manny wants a deal longer than one year. This is a two-year deal.

On the downside, however, the Tornadoes’ park does not have a scoreboard in left field into which Manny can duck in order to heed the call of nature…

MLB Network may only be a month old, but it just gave itself a real shot of credibility. Bob Costas will leave HBO – but not NBC – and ply his trade with the fledgling MLB Network. Bob Costas is on the “A-List” for sports broadcasters.

Steve Rosenbloom writes the Rosenblog for the Chicago Tribune website. Here is one of his recent observations regarding some bad news for the White Sox. He and I seem to think alike on things like this:

“Bad news, Sox fans: The Twins stopped negotiating with Eric Gagne. This move might’ve been the thing that clinched the AL Central for the Sox because the best way to deal with Twins closer Joe Nathan is never to face him, and the best way never to face him is to have Gagne work in front of him.”

José Canseco fought another of his three-round celebrity boxing matches recently. After getting clocked by Vai Sikahema in the previous fight, Canseco took on Danny Bonaduce in this one. Despite about a ten-inch height advantage and about a 40-pound weight advantage in favor of Canseco, this bout ended in a draw. Who is next for Canseco? Tonya Harding?

Finally, Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun wastes no words in his assessment of the goalkeepers for the Maple Leafs:

“The Maple Leafs have two goalies. One is Finnish. The other is finished.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

Comments(3)

Remember back to those days in high school when you took an exam for which you had not prepared nearly as much – or as well – as you should have. When the exams were graded and returned, you had a small sense of apprehension as you went to peek at your grade for the first time. Everyone has had that kind of feeling at least once in a while; that is precisely what I feel now as I go to Windows Explorer to open my NFL Pre-Season Analysis and Predictions from 9/1/08. I do not pretend to be able to remember everything I predicted then, but given the way the season unfolded, I know I am going to be way off in a boatload of the predictions. The grades here will not be pretty.

For those of you who might want to follow along with the “predictions” and this post mortem, here is the link to what I wrote in September 2008.

Here is my goal - - before I actually read any of those predictions. I would like my grades here to be such that I might have the requisite composite GPA to make it into an NCAA school under Prop 48 and play as a freshman. My SAT scores were high back when I took them in the Ordovician Period so all I need is a GPA of 1.6. My sense is that I am not a mortal lock to make it…

In terms of my “Coaches on the Hot Seat”, I did pretty well. I had Lane Kiffen and Mike Nolan on the list and neither made it to Thanksgiving in their job. I also had Mike Shanahan on the list; quite frankly, I do not think too many other crystal ball gazers had that one. I had Wade Phillips and Marvin Lewis on this list too; neither has been fired (I said Lewis would survive) but both have taken heavy criticism. John Fox’s Panthers played well this year so he was in no danger and Lovie Smith still has his job but is indeed still feeling heat in Chicago where one columnist routinely calls him “Lovie Kotite”. Obviously, I missed a few folks who are now job-hunting too. So, I’ll give myself a grade of C for the coaches on the hot seat.

AFC West:

I actually got the order of finish in this division perfect from top to bottom. However, I said it would take “a major upheaval and the intervention of the football gods to prevent the Chargers from winning this division.” Actually, it took a major collapse by the Denver Broncos - - which may have occurred via the intervention of the football gods - - to get the Chargers into first place.

I said the Chargers would win 12 games and win the division by 5 games. The Chargers won 8 games and won the division on a tiebreaker. Half-right.

I said the Broncos would finish second and win 7 games and I said that they needed to get a lot better on defense to succeed in 2008. The Broncos defense continued to stink; they won 8 games and finished second. Pretty good.

I said the Raiders would win 6 games and finish third in the AFC West. They won 5 games and finished third. Pretty good

I said the Chiefs would be a young team that would not do well in 2008 but would give a lot of young players experience playing at the NFL level. I said they would finish last with only 4 wins. They did finish last; they only had 2 wins; they did play a boatload of young players all season long. Pretty good.

I’ll give myself a B for this division having hit the superfecta on the order of finish and coming within one win for half of the teams.

AFC South:

I said that the Colts would not win the Super Bowl based on the historical fact that no team that played in the Hall of Fame Game has ever done that. I got that right… I did not get a whole lot more right with my predictions for this division.

I said that the Jaguars would win the division with 12 wins. I thought that their WRs would have to improve to make them strong enough to do that. What happened was that their WRs continued to slog their way forward toward mediocrity. Jerry Porter was one of the worst free agent signings of the entire 2007/08 off-season. The Jags finished last in the division and won only 5 games. Ugly!

I said the Colts would finish second in the division with 12 wins and that they would have the #1 AFC wild card slot in the playoffs. The Colts did finish second; the Colts won exactly 12 games; they were the #1 AFC wild card team in the playoffs. Pardon me while I bask in this glory for a moment; I do not expect to have too many opportunities to do that…

Okay, now I’m back from my basking.

I said the Titans would finish third in the division with 8 wins. The Titans finished with 13 wins and the best record in the AFC. Ugly!

I said the Texans would finish last in the division with 7 wins. They finished third in the division with 8 wins. Pretty good.

I’ll give myself a D+ for this division. The “+” comes from nailing the Colts prediction.

AFC North:

I would rather pretend that I never made any predictions about this division - - but I did. Clearly, I was suffering from clue deficit disorder when I made these predictions. In fact, I could not have found a clue during the clue mating season in the dead flat center of a herd of horny clues even if I had smeared myself with clue pheromones and did a clue-mating dance. I made three general remarks that are monumentally stupid in hindsight:

1. “The only thing I am confident about when analyzing the AFC North is that the Ravens are not going to win it.” [They missed by one game.]

2. “The other thing I am confident about is that there will not be a wild card coming out of this division…” [The Ravens were a wild card.]

3. “…the key game of the season for the AFC North will be in week 16 when the Bengals go north to play the Browns.” [That game was about as meaningful as a book on parenting written by Brittney Spears’ folks.]

I said that the Bengals would win the AFC North with 9 wins. OK, now that you have stopped laughing the reality is that the Bengals finished third with 4 wins and 1 tie. Ugly!

I said that the Cleveland Browns would be “in the mix” here and would finish second in the division with 8 wins. Stop laughing and pay attention! The Browns finished last, stunk out the division and won 4 games. Ugly!

I said the Steelers would finish third in the division with only 7 wins because the schedule was too hard for them to navigate. The Steelers won 12 games, got a bye in the playoffs and won the Super Bowl. Ugly!

I said the Ravens would “be able to see every other team in the division very clearly, because the Ravens will finish last.” I gave the Ravens 4 wins for the year; they actually won 11 games. Ugly!

Clearly, the grade for this division has to be an F. If the grading scale went all the way down to “J”, I might have earned a “J” here.

AFC East:

I said that it was fashionable to find reasons for the Pats to crash and burn this year but I was not buying into any of them. Of course, none of those “reasons” included Tom Brady playing less than a half of a football game for the season.

I said the Pats would win the division with 12 wins and make the playoffs. The Pats won 11 games but missed the playoffs on a series of tiebreakers. Tolerable prediction.

I said the Bills would make the playoffs as the second wild card team and win 9 games for the season. When the Bills started off 5-1, it seemed as if I had underestimated them. Then reality struck; the Bills won 7 games for the year and finished dead last in the division. Not good.

I said the Jets would finish third in the division with 8 wins. I said that they would rue the day they gave that big contract to first round pick Vernon Gholston and he did virtually nothing for the team all year. The Jets did finish third in the division and they won 9 games. Pretty good.

I said the Dolphins would finish last in the division with 5 wins. They finished first in the division with 11 wins. Actually, they only lost 5 games so I had their win/loss record as a mirror image of what it turned out to be. Ugly!

I’ll give myself a D for this division. The Dolphins prediction was awful…

NFC West:

I was onto something in my general commentary about the NFC West as a division but it was the right church and the wrong pew:

“Conventional wisdom is that the Seattle Seahawks will win this division comfortably - - simply because the other teams in the division are putrid. The problem with that conventional wisdom is that it isn’t very wise. The Seahawks will not be as good this year as they were last year and some of the teams here might actually be starting to show signs of awaking from the stupor they have been in recently - - or in the case of the Cardinals have been in for the last 25 years.”

Now if I had just followed along on that train of thought a bit further…

I said the Seahawks would eventually win the NFC West but would struggle to do so with 9 wins. I said, “…their days of dominance in the NFC West are coming to an end.” Well, their days of dominance in that division ended abruptly in 2008 when the Seahawks finished third in the division and won a grand total of 4 games. Ugly!

I said the Niners would finish second in the NFC West with 8 wins. I also said that having JT O’Sullivan at QB was not necessarily a good thing for the team and it did not exactly work out for them. The Niners did finish second and they won 7 games on the year. Pretty good prediction here.

I said the Cardinals “will disappoint all of the folks who have once again focused on them as the up and coming outsider that is ready to crash the ‘NFL Playoff Party’.” I had them finishing third in the division with 7 wins. They won 9 games; they won the division; they got on a roll in the playoffs and then lost in the Super Bowl. That prediction for the regular season is off the mark but not as far off as it might seem at first.

I said the Rams would finish last in the division and that they would also win 7 games – the same as the Cardinals. Yeah, right! The Rams came out of the gate stinking like a sumo wrestler at the 20-mile mark of a marathon race. Then they maintained that level of achievement right to the end and won a total of 2 games for the season. The Rams stunk and my prediction for them stunk even worse.

I’ll give myself a D- for this division. The Niners’ prediction is all that keeps if from being an “F”.

NFC North:

In the general commentary about this division, I did have something dead-on right:

“When Brett Favre left Green Bay, he left the NFC North bereft of quality quarterbacking - - and quality quarterback play is what often makes the difference between a good team and a bad team.”

I looked at the division through that prism and still got it badly wrong…

I had the Packers winning the NFC North with 9 wins. I thought the Packers defense could “carry the day”; in the end, the Packers’ defense couldn’t carry a tune. The Packers finished third in the division with 6 wins. Very bad!

I had the Vikings finishing second in the NFC North with 8 wins. I did say that the Vikes would need to have some kind of passing offense to avoid having to win all their games by a 16-13 score. The Vikes won the division with 10 wins and it was indeed their defense that made that all possible. Tolerable prediction.

I had the Lions [cough, cough] finishing third in the NFC North with 6 wins. Clearly, they finished last in the division with ZERO wins. The only prediction made in 2008 worse than this one was by some guy somewhere who obviously was smoking an illegal substance when he said he thought that Ralph Nader might carry more than one state in the Presidential election. Atrocious!

I had the Bears finishing last in the NFC North with 4 wins. The Bears finished second and won 9 games - - and I am still not sure how they did that. Ugly!

I’ll give myself an F for this division despite coming close on the Vikings. The other predictions were off by so far you would need astronomical units to describe the distance.

NFC South:

Here comes another ugly set of predictions, I just know it…

I had this part right:

“The good teams here should enjoy good seasons and put games in the win column regularly because they play the less than fully competent NFC North in intraconference play.”

However, I also said this:

“The NFC South has three solid teams and one that is about as enticing as a toxic waste dump.” [Unfortunately, the “toxic waste dump” referred to the Atlanta Falcons…]

I had the Bucs winning the division with 10 wins. The Bucs did win 9 games this year but that only got them third place in the division. Not good.

I had the Saints finishing second in the division with 9 wins and a wild card slot in the NFC playoffs if they beat the Panthers on the final weekend. I thought the Saints had improved their defense for 2008; it did not work out that way. The Saints finished dead last in the division even though my prediction was only off by one win; the Saints won 8 games. Not good.

I had the Panthers finishing third in the division with 9 wins and a wild card slot in the NFC playoffs if they beat the Saints on the final weekend. The Panthers won the division; they won 12 games; they earned a bye week in the NFC playoffs. Bad prediction.

I had the Falcons finishing last in the division with 2 wins. Here is some of what I said about them:

“The Atlanta Falcons will stink. The Falcons will probably start rookie QB, Matt Ryan for a lot of the games. Ryan may be a fine player some day - - but not this year. The offensive line is mediocre and RB, Michael Turner, will wonder why the holes he sees in Atlanta are so much more fleeting than the ones he saw in San Diego.”

The Falcons finished second in the division; they won 11 games; they made the NFC playoffs. Horrible prediction!

I’ll give myself an F for this division.

NFC East:

I said that the four teams here might be among the top six teams in the conference. That should give you an idea about how badly these predictions will turn out to be…

I had the Cowboys winning the division with 12 wins and the top slot in the NFC playoffs. To be fair, I did say they had “some disruptive players on the team (Pacman Jones) and some humongous egos” and that they “have no depth at WR or in the defensive secondary.” I also wrote:

“…if for any reason the locker room starts to get tense with all the egos there – including the omnipresent owner – the Cowboys could self-immolate. Wade Phillips seems like a nice man and has been a fine defensive coordinator over the years, but I am not sure he is the guy to put the toothpaste back in the tube if things head south with the Cowboys.”

“All of that” was right; nonetheless, I underestimated the potency of “all of that” and “all of that” led to the Cowboys finishing third in the division with 9 wins. Bad prediction. I had all the dots connected and still misinterpreted the picture.

I had the Giants finishing second in the division with 10 wins and gave them a wild card slot in the playoffs. I thought the losses of Michael Strahan and Osi Umanyoura would be too much for them to overcome to win the division. The Giants overcame those personnel losses, won the division with 12 wins, and had home field advantage in the NFC playoffs. Bad prediction.

I had the Eagles finishing third in the division with 8 wins. I said that the Eagles lacked – and needed – a deep threat in the passing game to get better and that DeSean Jackson might be the guy to provide that but there were questions about his dedication. Jackson had a fine season. The Eagles finished second in the division with 9 wins and 1 tie and made the playoffs as a wild card team. Not good.

I had the Redskins finishing last in the division with 8 wins. I also said:

“…the offensive line is aging and has had injury issues in each of the last three seasons. The local fanboys in DC still think Joe Bugel can conjure up a great offensive line out of guys who move pianos for a living. [Memo to Fanboys: He can’t.] If two OL starters go down or have to play at diminished capacity here, the Redskins’ season will be a long one. “

Not to dislocate my shoulder by patting myself on the back, but that is exactly what happened to the Redskins offense by mid-season and they limped home with a 2-6 record for the second half of the year. The Redskins did finish last and they did win 8 games. As the British might say about this prediction, “Spot on!”

I’ll give myself a C for this division.

Recapitulating, we have nine grades here – one for each of the divisions and one for “coaches on the hot seat”. The breakdown is:

A None
B One
C Two
D+ One
D One
D- One
F Three

Counting the D+, the D and the D- as three grades of “D” and using the four-point scale this comes out to a GPA of 1.33. That is pathetic; that does not qualify me for freshman eligibility by NCAA standards. Therefore, I will go off to remedial courses in prognostication before returning to embarrass myself once again - - uh, make next year’s predictions - - in August/September 2009.

However, just to show you that I do not intend to abandon the “prediction business”, let me make one for you right here and right now:

No fatties will finish in the top ten in either the men’s or women’s divisions of the Boston Marathon on 20 April 2009.

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

Comments(0)

“National Signing Day” came and went yesterday - - thankfully. For reasons beyond my comprehension, many folks pay lots of attention to where a bunch of high school football players chooses to go to college to play football. Multiple hundreds of these kids are tracked and rated and projected by fanboys to be superstars. Many of them will play; few will excel; some will never be heard about again. Talk about mining low grade ore… National Signing Day demonstrates the vigor of hope within the basic human spirit; this event celebrates expectation in the face of experience.

The NFL Draft is sort of like the next step up from National Signing Day. The NFL Draft is also hugely overblown but a far higher fraction of the players drafted actually does something for the team selecting them than happens as a result of National Signing Day.

By the way, on this date in 1631, Roger Williams arrived in New England. His piano would not arrive until six months later.

This week we learned that Bud Selig made more than $18M last year as the Commissioner of MLB. Naturally, the segment of the media best described as the “Bud Is A Boob Crowd” was outraged. I am outraged too but for a different reason. I am outraged because that puts Bud Selig in an earnings category reserved for the very few best players in the game. Bud Selig is not a boob and he is not a bad person and he is not a bad commissioner; nonetheless, he does not contribute to the game of baseball at the level of truly elite players. His salary offends me as much as theirs do.

In addition, people then had to compare Selig’s salary to the other commissioners. He makes $7M more than Roger Goodell; to me, that means he is even more overpaid than is Goodell; both are overpaid. Gary Bettman supposedly makes $6M a year; I can arrange for the NHL to have their games televised on a network that no one can find in their cable system for 10% of that figure. In my mind, Selig is clearly worth three times whatever Bettman gets.

However, when Selig’s salary was compared to the $10M that David Stern earns, many of the media felt it necessary to opine that Stern was seriously underpaid because Stern was the best commissioner of a major sport that ever was. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where I get off the bus…

I think that a large segment of the US media hugely overvalues David Stern. Let me be clear; I do not think he is a boob; I do not think that he is incompetent. I do think that David Stern has been “in the right place at the right time” and that, on balance, he has done no harm to the NBA. Beyond that, feh!

Many media acolytes credit David Stern for the NBA’s popularity boom in the 1980s and 90s. I believe that he was merely along for the ride. Those same media acolytes often say that he took the NBA from a truly minor status in the 1970s – playoffs were shown on tape delay then – to a premier status in the 80s and 90s. I think that is hogwash.

Check the timeline here, but David Stern did not become commissioner of the NBA until February 1984. By the time his fanny hit the commissioner’s chair, Dr. J was in the twilight of his career, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson had been in the league for about 4 years, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was still playing well and the NBA had gotten past its “tape-delay” status several years ago. Things were looking up for the NBA when Stern took the helm.

Now comes the evidence of being “in the right place at the right time”. In the late spring of 1984, mere weeks after David Stern took over, the Lakers and Celtics played one of their epic matchups in the NBA Finals – Bird versus Magic with supporting casts to include Kareem and McHale and … Then in the NBA Draft in the summer of 1984, the incoming class included Hakeem Olajuawon, Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley and John Stockton (listed in the order they were drafted).

Now hear this. David Stern had nothing whatsoever to do with that fantastic NBA Final series nor did he have a single thing to do with that class of draftees. They happened; the NBA flourished and David Stern went along for the ride. If David Stern is a great commissioner because he happened to be in the league with players like Jordan and Magic and Bird, then should he be considered a horrendous commissioner because he was also in the league with referee Tim Donaghy? None of this makes David Stern a bad person by any means; it also does not make him a great commissioner.

On the negative side of David Stern’s ledger, please consider the expansions and the relocations that have happened on his watch. If he can go along for the ride on the upside with Jordan and Magic and Bird, he can also go along for the ride with a league that now has teams in very tenuous markets such as Charlotte, Memphis (née Vancouver), New Orleans (née Charlotte), Oklahoma City (née Seattle) and Sacramento (née Kansas City). In good economic times, these markets are borderline; in the current economic climate, they will be a drain on the league. Do not be surprised if one or more of these teams has to move in the next two years to stay afloat.

Oh, and do not forget the hugely unsuccessful ventures that David Stern’s NBA embarked upon during his watch. Perhaps he merely acquiesced to the idea of starting the Developmental League, but it happened on his watch and it has grown into nothing that is even interesting. In no way can anyone think that the WNBA happened over David Stern’s objection; he has been front and center as its staunchest supporter from the beginning. In the very good economic times, the WNBA lost money every year, survived because the NBA bankrolled those losses and tried to make itself appear to be viable by lying about its attendance.

The NBA All-Star Game is coming up very soon. David Stern will be out there for media coverage and many will fawn over him and tell you that he is a great commissioner. When you hear that, ask yourself why none of these “problem areas” ever seems to come up in the discussions…

By the way, can anyone confirm for me that there was a time when dribbling was actually necessary in an NBA game and that there was a violation known as “traveling” whereby a whistle sounded and the ball was given to the other team? I think I recall something like that…

Finally, Scott Ostler has this comment in the SF Chronicle that relates to the expectations of the NBA Draft compared to its reality:

“If the Warriors, as some suggest, are tanking in order to get a high draft pick, it will be worth it if they land Davidson’s Stephen Curry. He would be an instant NBA sensation … once the Warriors draft him, sit him on the bench, ship him to the NBA Developmental League, and trade him for a 6-foot-5 small forward.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

Comments(2)